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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23594953">born to lose (the last in line is always called a bastard)</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/waferkya/pseuds/waferkya'>waferkya</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Code Black (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Idiots in Love, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, M/M, Mutual Pining</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-04-11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-04-11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-03 00:01:48</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>5,133</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23594953</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/waferkya/pseuds/waferkya</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>He’s checking out what he suspects might be a pulmonary embolism in an otherwise perfectly healthy teenager when he starts noticing something’s off in his own breathing pattern; his chest feels tight, his head is getting lighter by the second. Angus stands up and his eyes cross. He’s unconscious before his head hits the ground.</i>
</p><p>canon divergence after episode 1x18 and so. much. pining.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Angus Leighton/Mario Savetti</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>45</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>born to lose (the last in line is always called a bastard)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    
<p></p><div><p>Angus is supposed to be taking his brotherly-mandated break, except his brain is too wired and he can’t make it shut up, so he ends up lending a hand to the nurses and doctors dealing with patients who won’t be leading the free world any time soon. It’s a different world from the trenches of center stage, but it keeps his heart pumping, his blood boiling, so it’s enough.</p><p>He’s checking out what he suspects might be a pulmonary embolism in an otherwise perfectly healthy teenager when he starts noticing something’s off in his own breathing pattern; his chest feels tight, his head is getting lighter by the second. Angus stands up and his eyes cross. He’s unconscious before his head hits the ground.</p>
<p></p><div class="center"><p>*</p></div>Mario paces the hallway just outside the OR. He can’t leave; but he does not have the guts to go in and watch. His ears are still ringing with Jesse’s hoarse call for help — he was the first to put his hands on Angus, the first to see the bruises, the swelling, the blood pooling under the skin — but most of all, Mario keeps replaying the tape of Mike’s eyes widening as he took in his brother, unconscious on a gurney, BP in the tank, on the verge of coding. The entire ER still echoes with Mike’s wounded voice as he shouted in Leanne’s face that <i>no fucking way</i> his brother would get life-saving surgery in center stage, even if he had to carry him up four floors of stairs himself.<p>Leanne, for once, put her hands up and let someone else decide.</p><p>Mario paces and pulls at his own hair and steals glances at the little viewing window in the door but doesn’t dare come any closer.</p><p>He sees Malaya jogging up from the stairwell. She must’ve heard. The entire county must’ve heard by now. She’s ashen, she seems to want to go straight for the doors  but then she stops in front of Mario and grabs his shoulders.</p><p>She’s speaking, he knows she is, he sees her lips moving and her throat working, but he can’t hear her. <i>He’s not dying on this floor</i>, is all he hears, on a loop. Malaya shakes him a little, she pulls a thermos flask out of thin air and pushes it into his hands. The warmth seeping through the metal surface grounds him somewhat. Mario exhales.</p><p>“You need to breathe, Mario, I beg you—it’s okay, you’re having a panic attack,” Malaya says, and Mario frowns because that makes no sense, he’s never had a panic attack, he doesn’t <i>do</i> panic, thank you very much. But then he thinks about it, goes through his mental checklist of symptoms and what do you know, he has them all, a textbook case.</p><p>Diagnosing himself helps him calm down. Malaya smirks just the slightest bit, as if she already knew how this would play out. Mario hates being seen, being known; he hates it so much, it makes his skin feel tight and transparent. He lets her walk him to a chair and sits down anyway.</p><p>“I’ll go in and check how he’s doing, alright? I’ll be out in a minute,” Malaya says. She’s always been the bravest of them all. Mario nods, numb all over. She stands up and then the doors are swinging behind her. Mario is alone again, but he knows Malaya’s gonna have to come back: he still has her thermos.</p>
<p></p><div class="center"><p>*</p></div>Angus wakes up in the ICU groggy and sore all over, his entire torso feeling a couple of sizes too small. His vision is swimming, but he makes out the shape of Mike sitting by his bedside, pale as a ghost, his face scrunched up in worry. Angus’ head is pounding but he wills away the aftershock of general anesthesia and forces his lips to curve into a smile.<p>“You told ‘em to give me a tummy tuck too, right?” he says, wincing at how rough his voice sounds. Mike scoffs, grabs a cup of ice chips and shoves one in his mouth.</p><p>“Shut the fuck up, you idiot,” he mumbles, not without affection. Angus smiles a little more easily around the mouthful of ice. He wants to ask what happened, but the tightness in his chest is a pretty good clue.</p><p>He got major surgery for a catastrophic internal bleeding; the explosion must’ve knocked him around harder than he realized, the adrenaline kept him up way past what his internal organs could’ve handled. Mike tells him all of this in his doctorly matter-of-fact voice, the right mix of gentle and scolding, but all Angus can concentrate on is the sad, pitying look in his brother’s eyes, which can only mean he knows about the pills.</p><p>His heart monitor announces to the world that Angus is getting antsy and stressed out.</p><p>“Calm down, man, please, you’re alright,” Mike says, because he knows what’s going on. “Nobody else knows, okay? Just me and Dr. Savetti. You don’t need to worry. You just… gotta stop, okay? You’re all clean now, you gotta stay that way. Fuck, you lost so much blood...”</p><p>“How much?” Angus asks, his eyes wet. Mike opens his mouth, then he closes it, shakes his head. He brings up one hand to brush Angus’ short hair away from his forehead, and it’s enough of an explanation: Angus really had it bad. “I’m sorry, Mike, I didn’t—”</p><p>“It’s okay,” Mike immediately says. “It wasn’t your fault. You went through a fucking explosion, man. I know you felt fine but it was stupid of us not to check.”</p><p>With the smallest voice in the world, Angus asks: “Mario?”</p><p>Mike smiles. “Savetti is alright. Perfect bill of health. Jesse’s been keeping an eye on him.”</p><p><i>Shit</i>, Angus thinks. Jesse’s never gonna let him live this one down. He’ll have to apologize every day for the rest of his life and buy him a truckload of donuts.</p><p>Mike’s pager goes off. He shuts it up, but Angus smiles, all amusement and absolution: “Go.”</p><p>Mike looks conflicted. The pager goes off again. He stands up. He cups the side of Angus’ face one last time, bites his bottom lip, and says: “Don’t scare me like that again.”</p><p>“I’mma try,” Angus bites back, never too exhausted for shitty humor. Mike’s smile seems to untighten a little, and then he leaves. Angus goes back to sleep.</p>
<p></p><div class="center"><p>*</p></div>Angus has been awake for hours and Mario is the only one who hasn’t visited him yet. He’s just busy, that’s all; they’re drowning in code black and they’re down a resident, no need to read anything more into his lack of trips up to the ICU. He has had the time to interrogate Mike as soon as he got back to the floor, though: Mario squeezed a full report on Angus’ physical and mental status out of him, and he’s been so thorough that at one point Mike was tempted to invoke the Fifth and plead for mercy.<p>Dr. Campbell did some of his best work on Angus, so imminent death is not a danger anymore, and the possibility of any kind of lasting damage is non-existent. Angus will be fine. Death tapped him on the shoulder, invited him out to drinks, but they turned out to not be such a good match after all. Yet.</p><p>There’s no rational reason to be worried, therefore: Mario is not worried. But he’s still actively avoiding Malaya and her kind, empathetic eyes, and Jesse, for exactly the same reason. Instead he trails after Dr. Rohrish like a puppy who can’t wait to get kicked and pushed to his limits. He’s the first to run out to meet incoming gurneys, he swivels around the beds in center stage,  and bows his head over a tracheotomy even if his shift is technically over.</p><p>After another four hours of overtime, Dr. Rorish pulls him aside and doesn’t ask him to stop: she commands it. Mario takes a breath for what feels like the first time since Angus went down.</p><p>“Go see him,” Leanne says, never one for dancing around an issue. And again, it’s not a suggestion, but an order. Mario nods, his head empty. It’s morning outside. He didn’t even realize.</p>
<p></p><div class="center"><p>*</p></div>Angus has had a shitty night. His body is exhausted and sore and useless, it needs rest, but his brain is stupidly stubborn: it’s craving all the happy, complicated hormones that come from working in the ER, and it’s screaming at him to run out of this room and go look for a life to save. Angus knows his room is on the wrong side of the building for him to be able to hear the sirens of the ambulances coming up to the ramp; and he knows that no matter how hard she screams, there’s no way that Dr. Rorish’s voice could carry from deep inside the guts of the hospital all the way up to him; he knows this must all be inside his head, the sounds of the emergency room engraved so deep in his frontal lobe that the echoes still sit with him right now; and still. He thinks he can hear them. And he knows they could use his help.<p>He’s restless and his heart rate goes up in a way it shouldn’t. A nurse offers pills to help him sleep but Angus shakes his head. He wants peace, not chemically-induced oblivion. He wants to be elbow-deep in blood and intestines, he wants to save a patient’s life intubating them blind, he wants to diagnose an incoming stroke before anyone else has even noticed the symptoms; and at the same time, he wants to not have to do any of those things at all, because he wants everyone to be okay, forever.</p><p>He’s strung-out and alert and in pain for every second of every minute of every hour of his shift. When that’s over, he still can’t sleep for another two hours, because overtime is just a part of his working routine now. Then finally the night is over; morning light seeps in through the curtains, and Angus breathes out. He falls asleep in a blink, simple like flicking a switch.</p><p>His stomach wakes him up around noon, like it always does, demanding food and a shot of caffeine. Angus rubs sleep from his eyes, checks that the tightness in his chest seems to be receding somewhat, and then he stops moving altogether because Mario is passed out next to his bed, crumpled up in the same chair where Mike was sitting.</p><p>Angus can’t stop the smile pulling at the corners of his lips. Everyone else popped by, even just for a quick hello-get-better-soon, but no other visit has made him feel this giddy and warm. Mario looks like shit, pale and underfed and frowning even as he sleeps. There are specks of blood all over his scrubs, and he kicked off his shoes to reveal bony ankles and cheap, threadbare socks; Angus wants to grab his phone off the nightstand and go online and buy him two hundred pairs of thick, luxurious, mid-calf woolen socks embroidered with stupid little things that’ll force a smile out of Mario in the morning: colorful donuts and smiling mangoes and carpentry tools, street lights and rainbows and photorealistic portraits of the ugliest trolls he could possibly imagine.</p><p>Mario stirs awake gently, as if sleep was a comfortable bath of molasses he doesn’t want to let go of. Angus sees the exact moment he realizes where he is; Mario’s frown deepens, he twists around in the chair, puts his feet on the floor—he can’t suppress a shiver because linoleum is fucking cold even in the middle of the day—then looks up and he seems, for the briefest of seconds, so fucking relieved and grateful and <i>okay</i> that it’s almost too painful to watch.</p><p>Angus doesn’t tear his eyes off of him. He keeps looking as Mario’s walls come back up online, as he bites his tongue to keep a smile on, as he blinks fast to get rid of anything that might’ve maybe looked like tears.</p><p>“Hey,” Angus says, a lopsided grin on his face; he has a million quips he wants to say to tease Mario about what he just saw on his face, but he’s gonna stay put. That reaction, that quick glimpse of truth and affection, was precious and private and it would be criminal to make fun of it, even if it’s just to dispel the awkwardness sitting thick inbetween them. “Slept well?”</p><p>“Yeah,” Mario says, clearing his throat. He rubs a hand over his face, then he looks at Angus like he’s trying to do a full body scan with his eyes. “How’s… everything?”</p><p>“I’m good,” Angus smiles, his voice carefully light. “Campbell treated me right. The nurse says I probably won’t even have a scar to show off. Lucky me.”</p><p>Mario snorts something that could resemble a laugh, if one was being very generous; Angus smiles and tucks that sound in a deep pocket inside his memory. They look at each other some more, and Angus feels the air in the room shift in the same way it does in a plane during take-off. He starts to get nervous, because suddenly he can’t read Mario’s face and he’s afraid of what’s coming next.</p><p>“I’m happy to see you,” he says, because a feeling in his gut is telling him Mario is about to bolt out the door and never come back.</p><p>He’s not wrong.</p><p>Mario quickly puts his shoes back on, and then he stands; somehow, he looks smaller now than when he was sitting. His shoulders slouch, he doesn’t meet Angus’ eyes.</p><p>“I should’ve known,” he says staring at the wall, and Angus hates that he can’t get up and grab his collar and make Mario look at him. “I was there. I should have…”</p><p>Mario shakes his head, can’t seem to think of how to finish that sentence, but Angus gets it, he does, and he feels like shit. <i>This is it</i>, he thinks, <i>this is what it takes</i>: he got himself a pill problem and now Mario can’t even look at him anymore. He has crossed a line, went streaking wild through a territory where he knows Mario is most vulnerable, and Mario can’t deal with him anymore. Of course, it’s not like Mario has ever been even the slightest bit open about his issues with drugs and addicts; but Angus is not a moron, he’s a perceptive motherfucker and he put the general outline of the story together from bits and pieces and patience. It sucks, having become just one more person in Mario’s life that let him down.</p><p>However, Angus is also furious. He understands Mario’s reaction, but he thinks it’s unfair. It’s not like he was shooting up in dirty alleys or showing up for work high on acids. It’s fucking Adderall, man. It’s not nothing, alright, but it’s not completely insane either. Angus picked the saddest, least fun substance to get addicted to; he figures it should be kinda okay to let it slide. At least, Mario could try to make more of an effort—especially considering all the backstabbing he’s done and Angus has forgiven and forgotten over the past year.</p><p>Angus knows it’s selfish to be thinking like this, and it’s not like he ever wanted to keep score in this friendship, but holy shit, he can’t help it. It should count for something, right? He’s been a good friend. Mario should remember; should at least <i>want</i> to keep their friendship alive.</p><p>Instead, he’s going to close himself off again, like he always does, and put miles of cold distance between them. He can’t look past this. Angus should’ve predicted this outcome. He should’ve known this was going to be goodbye; and now he feels immensely more stupid for the flapping happiness that filled his chest when he saw Mario asleep in the chair.</p><p>“It’s okay,” he says eventually, something bitter stuck to the back of his mouth. “This one’s on me. Thanks for dropping by anyway.”</p><p>Mario looks lost for a second; then he just nods, bites his lips, and takes Angus’ words for what they are: permission to leave without looking back.</p>
<p></p><div class="center"><p>*</p></div>(Here are the words that Mario couldn’t find:<p><i>You were injured and I didn’t notice and it’s killing me, because you almost died and I was there next to you the entire time and didn’t notice. I was supposed to protect you. And the pills—I went at it all wrong, I should’ve offered comfort and support instead of challenging you and I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I screwed up and I let you down and I’m praying a God I don’t believe in that you can forgive me, one more time, because I’m so fucking sorry. I don’t deserve you, your goodness and your kindness and your friendship, I don’t, I don’t deserve any of it, but I can’t lose you. I was supposed to protect you.</i>)</p>
<p></p><div class="center"><p>*</p></div>When Angus finally comes back to the floor a few days later, there’s a round of applause that makes him blush and smile shyly and bow his head because he’s an idiot and still thinks he’s expendable. Jesse is first in line to give him a bone-crushing hug. The last time he put his arms around the kid’s big shoulders, Angus was half-dead and cold as winter. Now he vibrates with laughter and hugs him back even harder, and Jesse finds he breathes a little easier for the rest of his shift. What can he say. Mama’s a sap and everyone knows it.<p>But Mama is also oh-so-very observant, nothing escapes his understanding gaze, and so he doesn’t miss the fact that Dr. Savetti stays on the sidelines the entire night, actively avoiding crossing Angus’ path, and that Angus is doing exactly the same thing in return.</p><p>Jesse contemplates their strange dance for a few hours; one glance at Leanne and he knows she’s seeing this too, and wondering what’s going on, same as him.</p><p>They’re putting a chest tube inside a fifty-six-year-old woman who collapsed while jogging when Leanne looks at him over the rim of her glasses and, in the midst of chaos, simply says: “Talk to them.”</p><p>Jesse opens his mouth in protest, because his right hand is holding the breathing bag that’ll soon save the jogger’s life while his left hand is busy plugging a bleeder in the side of the neck of the patient in the next gurney, so yeah, his plate’s kinda full right now, but Leanne simply smirks and goes back to work. Jesse huffs and puffs and puts <i>talk to the boys</i> on top of his list of things to do as soon as they’re out of code black.</p>
<p></p><div class="center"><p>*</p></div>Angus is headed for the shower, the stitches in his chest itching like a motherfucker, when Jesse corners him and stares into his face so hard Angus is afraid he’ll be able to read his deepest, darkest thoughts.<p>But Jesse smiles in that gentle, vaguely menacing way only he can pull off, and says: “You alright, kid?”</p><p>Angus nods, at a loss for words. He knows Jesse noticed the awkwardness between him and Mario, he hates that he’s so transparent, and really doesn’t want to talk about it. But he also knows that Mama’s not gonna back down.</p><p>“You first year’s almost up. Know what that means?”</p><p>Angus tries to go for a joke. “I can wear big boy pants now?”</p><p>Jesse chuckles. “Not quite. But we are going to get new residents in a few weeks. You’re gonna have to look after them, yeah? Not just you—all second years take care of their own.”</p><p>“Yeah,” Angus says, resisting the urge to scratch his chest. “Can’t wait.”</p><p>“I’d suggest that you try and smooth over any pre-existing issues before the new kids come in. We don’t wanna make them uncomfortable.”</p><p>Angus feels himself blush; he’s glad they’re alone in the locker room, because being the designated victim of Mama’s straight-forwardness isn’t that different from getting your pants pulled down in the middle of gym class.</p><p>“There’s no issues, Jesse. I promise.”</p><p>Jesse rolls his eyes. “Don’t lie to your Mama, kid. You’re better than that.”</p><p>Angus sighs. “I know. But I had to try.”</p><p>“It’s okay. Mama knows,” Jesse says, with his kindest smile. “It’s okay to be afraid. But you gotta talk this out, yeah? You’re gonna need each other.”</p><p>Jesse leaves with a comforting pat on Angus’ shoulder—well, the top of his arm really, because that’s as far as he can reach without standing on tiptoes, which would have been way too embarrassing for both of them—and Angus tries very hard not think, desperately, that talking isn’t going to be enough to salvage the wreck of his relationship with Mario.</p><p>They’re not friends anymore. It might even be that they never were in the first place.</p>
<p></p><div class="center"><p>*</p></div>Mario hates going to work now. It takes him a couple of days to man up and face the reason why: he hates it because whenever he turns around, he sees empty air, or Christa or Malaya or Jesse at best, where instead he expected to find Angus’ caring eyes and his focused expression. His heart shrinks one size every time it happens, and it happens a lot.<p>He figures the cold shoulder is what he deserves for ratting Angus out to Mike, putting his career and his license at risk; nobody likes a snitch, even when there’s no malice behind it but a genuine concern. Mario handled that whole situation in the worst possible way, and Angus is right to be angry with him, he’s right to hate him.</p><p>Mario only wishes it didn’t suck so much.</p><p>Not having Angus by his side makes him realize how used he’d gotten to always, <i>always</i> have him close. And how much he relied on Angus to keep him sane, centered, confident in his decisions. It fucks him up a little, a lot, and Mario has never been good at dealing with angst. When he goes back at home after work, he knows he’s alone at a crossroads. In front of him are two choices: the liquor store three blocks down, the dealer on that same streetcorner. So, Mario simply takes a U-turn and heads back to the hospital.</p><p>He sleeps in on-call rooms, takes three showers a day and grabs any scrubs his size from the lost-and-found to hide the fact that he pretty much never goes home. He’s gonna crash soon, but he’d rather it happens here, where there’s people that’ll catch him.</p><p>It’s progress of some kind.</p><p>He deludes himself into thinking nobody’s noticed. The truth is that they all know but they’re assuming a bad break-up or something like that, and he might have planted a little story about some maintenance work that completely shut down the heating in his building. He gets sympathetic smiles and complimentary coffees from the nurses, as well as so many invitations to <i>come crash on my couch tonight</i> that he could just as well stop paying rent and live hopping from one bed to the next for a few months. He doesn’t take up any of those offers; but he does eat all the home-cooked meals that Jesse brings him. He’s a wonderful cook.</p><p>He’s trying to take a midday nap in a storage closet when Angus comes looking for him. Mario looks up from his makeshift cot, and the moment he meets Angus’ understanding eyes he knows he’s screwed.</p><p>“Sorry,” Angus says. “I didn’t know someone was in here.”</p><p>“It’s alright, I wasn’t sleeping,” Mario says, hating how rough his voice is. He sits up, rubs a hand to the back of his neck. “How you doing?”</p><p>Angus shrugs. “Good. Jesse needed another box of gauze,” he mumbles, scanning the shelves, and that’s already the longest non-patient-related conversation they’ve had in weeks.</p><p>Mario lifts a hand to point at a shelf on the back of the closet, where he knows Angus’ll find the gauze. Angus hesitates, because with Mario sitting on the floor, he can’t really go there without stepping over him. Mario realizes it, and stands up just when Angus thinks <i>fuck it</i> and takes a step forward anyway.</p><p>They don’t crash into each other, but it’s a close call. The cramped space feels immensely smaller now they’re almost chest-to-chest.</p><p>“Sorry,” Mario says, and his hand brushes against the back of Angus’ wrist when he moves to grab the box he’d come in for. It’s on the top shelf and he can barely reach it, he feels Angus react instinctively behind him, stretching up to help: his body is a wall of warmth just inches away from Mario’s back, and he’s tempted to lean into it, into <i>him</i>.</p><p>He’s about to, when Angus pulls back, box of gauze safely in his hands.</p><p>“It’s okay. Thanks,” Angus says, and then it’s like he’s waiting for Mario to say something. Mario turns around to look at him, but he struggles with words again. Angus sighs, takes a step back. “I’m definitely off it, you know? The Adderall. Thought I’d tell you.”</p><p>Mario lets out a shaky breath. “That’s great, man. I mean, I guess I—I already knew. You’re… more yourself. I’m glad.”</p><p>Angus’ smile is tight and a little sad. “Yeah,” he sighs, then he hugs the box closer to his chest and starts to turn away. “I’m gonna go.”</p><p>Mario knows he said something wrong, but he doesn’t know what. He needs Angus to explain. He needs Angus to yell at him for letting Mike know about the pills, he needs Angus to scream and curse him for not knowing that after the explosion Angus was <i>fucking bleeding internally so much he almost died</i>, he needs Angus to call him out for acting like a fucking coward and disappearing after Malaya was assaulted and Gina died, he needs Angus to shove him hard and punch him a couple of times, he needs Angus to rip him to fucking pieces and then feel better about it so they can be friends again.</p><p>Fuck, he just needs Angus to do anything except treat him like he doesn’t matter; like he never mattered.</p><p>Mario grabs his shoulder to stop him.</p><p>“Will you—will you just talk to me for a second?” he says, and it comes out angrier than he meant, but it works anyway because he sees fury flare up behind Angus’ eternally kind eyes.</p><p>“About what?” Angus asks, a mask of serenity and disinterest, and Mario is going to go crazy if this doesn’t stop.</p><p>“I get that you’re angry with me—and you have every right to be, shit, I wouldn’t talk to myself either—but you’re better than me, always have been, and I—fuck, shit, I can’t take this anymore. Talk to me, please.”</p><p>Angus looks up, surprised. “You… are you trying to say that you miss me?”</p><p>“<i>Yeah</i>,” Mario exhales, and wasn’t that obvious? “Man, I’m sorry about your accident. I should’ve noticed, I know that, but you have to know I’m so fucking sorry—”</p><p>“Wait, wait,” Angus says, and he puts away the box to grab both of Mario’s arms and slow him down. “You think I blame you because after surviving an explosion and in the middle of one of the worst nights we’ve had in this place, you didn’t notice I was bleeding internally? Something that—and I can’t stress this enough—even I only realized <i>after</i> I passed out? You think I’m angry at you because of that?”</p><p>“Yeah,” Mario says, and then, with the most brittle shard of hope in the world: “You’re not?”</p><p>“<i>No</i>,” Angus says, sounding incredulous that Mario would even think something so absurd. “Jesus, are you for real? Of course I don’t blame you.”</p><p>“Oh. Okay,” Mario blinks, and he’s hesitant to give in to relief, because he knows he fucked up much worse than that. “Sorry for telling your brother about the Adderall.”</p><p>Angus’ mouth hangs open even wider.</p><p>“Mario, what the fuck are you talking about,” he says, and he runs both his hands through his hair. Mario’s gotta admit he misses having them wrapped around his arms. “You’re sorry for… giving me the push I needed to get my shit together and get clean?”</p><p>“Yeah—I mean, of course not, I just thought—shit, Angus, if it’s not for the explosion and it’s not for telling your brother about the drugs, why the fuck have you been so angry at me?”</p><p>“I’m—okay, look, answer me this: do you hate me, because I’m a pill-popping irresponsible asshole that let you down just like everyone else in your life?”</p><p>Mario blinks. Then he blinks some more, because what Angus says just doesn’t make any sense. “What?”</p><p>That’s where Angus starts laughing. It starts small, and with a touch of self-pity, then it grows warm and relieved and beautiful, and Mario finds himself sucked into the sentiment, and starts smiling a little himself. A hopeful voice at the back of his mind whispers that he’s an idiot, and maybe Angus is too, just a little bit.</p><p>Angus punches him in the shoulder, and Mario feels like he might cry. They look at each other—it’s the first sun after the worst, shittiest winter—and smile and everything is okay again and Mario thinks, <i>fuck it</i>, he takes a step forward, and since they’re back on the same wavelength, Angus just did the same and they find themselves way too close to each other.</p><p>It should become a hug, but Angus asks, just under his breath: “One last question.”</p><p>Mario looks down at his mouth, then up to his eyes again. “Yeah?”</p><p>“Are you still sleeping with Heather?”</p><p>Mario smirks and laughs a little. “Fuck no.”</p><p>Angus smiles. “Okay. Just checking.”</p><p>Mario leans in. He kisses Angus, deep and focused, dirty and tender; cupping his face in his hands and stroking his thumbs in circles over Angus’ cheeks; shivering, full-body and unashamed, when Angus wraps his arms around him and pulls him even closer, impossibly so. He sucks at talking about this stuff—emotional stuff, important stuff—but at least he knows he’s good at acting on it. And it’s okay, because Angus gets him.</p>
<p></p><div class="center"><p>*</p></div>Jesse gets his box of gauze forty-five minutes after he asked for it. It’s okay; of course, he didn’t really need them. The rest of the shift, he observes the way Mario and Angus are back to their usual teeth-rotting schtick of always finding one another’s eyes from one corner of the ER to the other, and smiles to himself.<p>Mama’s kids are gonna be alright.<br/>
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  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>am i a sad hopeless sucker for medical dramas? i am. yes i am.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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